Finally -- Dale Gets Married, part four

After a 15-minute conversation, Leta invited her guests to the dining room for supper. She laid the table simply but everything was cleaned and polished until it shined. She wanted to make a good impression on the young woman her son Dale had brought to meet her and her husband Bob.

Kathryn was friendly and polite, although nervous. She giggled easily but was very open about herself and background. She appropriately complimented the house, its cleanliness (and it was very clean), the meal that started with a salad of cottage cheese and fruit cocktail, followed by a main course of roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, and warm biscuits. She told Leta that she rarely had gravy with her food, as her mother never made it, but she liked it very much.

“It’s not hard to make,” Leta said. “I can teach you. Dale loves gravy.”

“Yes, I do!” he said, eating his second helping of potatoes swimming in it.

While they hate, Dale and Kathryn relayed the story of their meeting at a church dance. Once each month, Kathryn’s church held the event, which she went to with her siblings. Even her siblings who moved with their parents to a farm several miles away would come for the dance. The attendance was comprised mostly of members of the parish with guests from a couple of other churches nearby. Nearly everyone who attended was Roman Catholic, since at least in their religious life, they were fairly separated from the other Christians of their community. Dale attended with his roommate, a fellow he had met through friends at work and moved in with shortly after Christmas, because, as he told his mother, he was a man and didn’t want to live with his father and grandparents any longer. Leta had never met the fellow, but he was a Roman Catholic, although he did not attend services very often.

“I usually only danced with boys I knew,” Kathryn explained, “but I had to take a turn to serve at the punch bowl. That’s when Dale came up to me. We got to talking, and then he asked me to dance.”

“She’s a wonderful dancer, Ma,” Dale interjected. Kathryn raised her hands in mock protest and laughed.

“He asked me when I would be at a dance like this again,” Kathryn continued. “and I said in two weeks there was another one at a different church that I would be going to.”

“I went, too,” Dale noted. “And then I asked her to see a film with me.”

“I love to see films!” she exclaimed. “Rita Hayworth and Spencer Tracy are my favorite actors.”

After the film, they saw each other once a week for a couple of months, and then began to spend weekends together. Dale started attending her church, and learning more about the Roman Catholic faith. He arranged for a conversation with the priest, and expressed his intention to marry the young lady. To do that, he was told, he would need to join the Church, so he began instruction. In the meantime, the couple’s relationship began to grow.

To be continued.